Free your Mind, and the Rest Will Follow:
Sending Books to Women in Prison.
by Megan Chapman

On Sunday afternoons, a diverse group meets in the Beyond Media space in Rogers Park. It's not for a book club, a poetry reading or a political meeting. In about six hours each month, a few women are able to personally touch hundreds of lives in five different states. They package up books, dictionaries and journals—three bindings to a package—and send them to women in prison, in response to their individual requests.

Sometimes the simplest project has the greatest impact. The Books to Women in Prison Project (Chicago BWP, http://www.chicagobwp.org/index), which is coming up on their two-year anniversary in February, has sent over 4,000 books to over a 1,171 women (statistics as of summer, 2005).

The project was started by a group who recognized a void. A loose network of “books to prisoners” projects, in fact, connects every American city—big and small—that has a progressive bent. But back in 2003 no such project existed in Chicago. Several of the project's founders had experience working with projects in other cities, and were surprised and motivated by this lack. Jack Slowriver, one of the project's founders, had been involved with a “books to prisoners” project in North Hampton, Massachusetts. Another of the project's founders had worked with a project in Philadelphia. They chose to focus on women in prison because, in the nationwide network, they were underserved. During her work with the project in Massachusetts, Slowriver says, she never once fielded a book request from a woman—although women now make up at least 8% of the prison population nationwide.

The real necessity for “books to prisoners” projects is surprising and little-known (since many of us have never tried): We private individuals are actually NOT ALLOWED to send books to the incarcerated. (We actually cannot send them paper, pens, envelopes, or stamps, either—in sort, any materials that could be forcably purchased through a prison commissary).Why not books? Perhaps it would distract prisoners from the prison academic program? Perhaps it would undermine the system of rewards and privileges that the prison library is part of? Perhaps it would allow prisoners to educate themselves, reduce recidivism rates and slow the growth of the prison industry?

Sarcasm aside, there is no good explanation for this fact. But it does create a need for private individuals to band together, give themselves a name, associate under the banner of an incorporated bookstore or a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and work around the system. Both the Chicago BWP and the Midwest Books to Prisoners, a second Chicago project recently formed, carefully track the differing regulations at each prison or jail they ship to. Some jails do not allow hard covers; some require that a front cover be on the book; all require a fake official invoice—although each outgoing invoice says the same: “$0—, paid in full.”

Beyond Media is the third home of the Chicago BWP project. It was originally housed in the Haymarket Co-op, where two members were living. After a year, that space became insufficient for the growing collection of books—now whole boxes and shelves organized into Self-Help, Mystery/Thriller, Romance, Fiction (light), Fiction (classics), Health, Legal, etcetera. They were about to move into a donated space at the A-Zone (an anarchist bookstore in Chicago), when it shut down. The group realized, says Slowriver, that “there may be a reason to pay rent.” Beyond Media offered a space for storage, meetings and book-packing parties—and shared their mission of “giving voice to the voiceless.”

Even with rent, the operation costs of a books to prisoners project are relatively low—one reason it can be sustained on an all-volunteer basis. All books are donated, time is volunteered by a solid group of about twenty, and regular costs are limited to rent, postage, good-quality dictionaries and high-demand books. Chicago BWP project is also forging the path into partially self-sustaining non-profiteering. Some donated books—especially high-value (but low-interest) hard covers, such as The Complete History of Texas—can not often be sent to a woman in prison, but can be sold for a high return on www.amazon.com. During peak sales season—the beginning of September, when many schools begin their semesters—the project can make up to $300 a week in Amazon sales, Slowriver estimates. In just a few weeks, this can contribute substantially to the annual budget of $3,500.

Slowriver emphasizes the importance of gradually building organizational capacity, as a project, and staying in the black. When she and about five others began the project and decided to focus on women in prisons, they contacted the Women's Prison Book Project in Minneapolis, which was at the time the only project covering women's requests from around the country (and was running several months' behind on requests). The newly formed Chicago project agreed to take their backlog of requests from Illinois. They handled this easily, and took over several new states. Now they process about 125-150 individual requests a month from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi, Connecticut and Florida.

The group—in the spirit of giving voice to the voiceless—has also published three issues of a newsletter called “Bound Struggles.” Each issue has taken on a challenging aspect of life in prison for women, such as family life or health care access. The newsletter blends analytical and academic writing from volunteers with letters, art and contributions from women in prison. In the most recent issue, a piece from a woman named Jeannette from a prison in Florida addressed drug crime and motherhood: “But your honor,” the poem concludes, “my child is why I did what I had to do. The money I made out there is what got us through.”

Another newsletter contributor, Vinette Crowley, a.k.a. “Shorty,” is one woman whose life intersected with the Chicago BWP while she was serving three years and five months for a drug conviction at Pekin prison camp in Illinois. She is now 45 years old and has two sons and two grandchildren, one born while she “was away” and one born shortly after her release from Pekin last Fall. In her writing, she comes across as vibrant, self-educated and strong-minded—in her own words, “I get on my soapbox, sometimes.”

When she went into prison, she “had no clue about the laws…I got turned on to the BWP project by a librarian at the prison camp.” For Vinette, law books were the key: “I wrote and requested any and all law books that BWP could provide me…the books I received helped me to learn the law and to fight my way out of prison 19 months sooner [than] I was sentenced…” She also “turned several of the less fortunate women in Pekin onto the project…and was so happy to have them yell, 'Shorty, I got the books!'”

“Books to prisoners” projects, according to Slowriver, tend to come from an anarchist, Food not Bombs-type of culture). These projects often partner with radical bookstores and use their business name for the invoice. For example, Midwest Books to Prisoners—the other Chicago project—partners with Quimby's Bookstore in Wicker Park. Quimby's accepts book donations and lets the group use the business name on invoices, although the group actually stores their books and meets for “packing parties” in a garage on the southwest side. They collect radical literature and zines to include in packages when they sense a sympathetic reception in the reader.

In fact, Midwest Books to Prisoners, which recently removed the anarchist language from their website, does not take a hard line on anarchist principles, says Sarah Jean McHugh, one of three who founded the project in June, 2004. Anarchist principles of mutual aid and cooperation serve as an ideal in the collective model, she says. But hard-line anarchism would mean not using the federal postal service, for example. Moreover, McHugh fears that the anarchist label might identify the project with a Eurocentric, white-privilege and a charity-type organization—that has little in common with the racial injustice of incarceration or the empowerment model she prefers.

For its part, Chicago BWP identifies with a feminist perspective. When asked how the feminist perspective is evidenced in the project—besides the obvious, of course—Slowriver couldn't say specifically. Books are delivered to women. Most of the members of the project consider themselves to be feminists. But in terms of the books that are delivered and the correspondence between prisoners and project members, the project respects individual choice and tries not to push a political agenda. A request for romance novels gets romance novels (lesbian romance also available). Requests for true crime or Christian teachings are matched as best as possible. Only in an extreme case—like a woman writing to request white supremacist or Nazi propaganda—will the project refrain. As Jack explains, they will not go out of their way to obtain this kind of literature. Then again, if such a book happens to come in, they may actually send it—and they may also take license to include accompanying books that offer balance to such an extremist perspective.

The feminist perspective may be more in the project's attitude and in the background understanding of the woman's place in the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC—as it is known in the world of Critical Resistance and Angela Davis.

Over beers, Slowriver laid out the PIC system for me from the women's perspective. Women are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. prison population (180,000 as of October, 2005—up more than 50% since 1995). A majority of incarcerated women are in for non-violent, first-time offenses, often drug-related. Many have been victims of domestic violence. Many are single mothers, whose children will go into the foster care system while their mothers go into jail. Many will fight custody battles from prison. When men go to prison, Slowriver generalized, women tend to hold families together and support the men. When women go to prison, they have no support and their families fall apart.

While in prison, Vinette got support from her mother. But her family has had its struggles. Vinette's husband of 26 years is serving 20 years in federal prison. Her brother is serving 12 years and 7 months. Her two sons “have addiction problems now and have had several run-ins with the law because of who their parents are. One tried to commit suicide eight times at the ages of 15 and 16.” In the meantime, Vinette's mother—a woman of 5'10”—shrunk to 86 pounds, due to illness and stress.

“People need to understand that we have addictions and need help…not to be locked up,” Vinette wrote. “We have children and elderly parents who need us…I believe women are the backbone of the family.”

Gail Smith, the executive director of Chicago Legal Aid for Incarcerated Mothers (CLAIM, http://www.claim-il.org), sees feminism as being concerned with all forms of oppression. And all forms of oppression—race, class, gender—are inherent in current incarceration methods. A feminist response to the PIC, said Smith, would concern itself with poverty, housing and education as the underlying causes of crime, and would move us towards de-carceration and prevention programs.

In the 20 years that CLAIM has been advocating on behalf of women in prison, the group has seen set-backs in programming here in Illinois. During the ‘90s, there were two work release centers in Chicago, which allowed women and men to live at home with their family while working off their time. Both of these closed with no warning a few years ago under Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) Director Snyder, who served under Governor Ryan.

Another Chicago program, called Jane's House, was a mother-infant program that kept women from being separated from their children during the critical first six months of life, says Smith. This program, too, closed suddenly in the year 2000. Under the current IDOC Director Walker, says Smith, there is a lot of talk about bringing these programs back, but so far no action.

In the absence of such programs, a feminist response to growing incarceration rates is spearheaded by private organizations. While Chicago BWP works on supplying books to women in prison and raising public awareness on a small scale, other Chicago groups like CLAIM, Visible Voices and Girl Talk (see Kari Lydersen article, also in this issue) work on group education and empowerment for women and girls who have experienced the PIC. CLAIM educates women in prison about custody and healthcare rights, teaching them to advocate on their own behalf. Visible Voices is a support group for women who have been released from prison, in which they discuss their experiences and develop public speaking skills.